Thud, thud, thud

Earlier this month I bought a dartboard and hung it in the spare room of my flat. I put it in the obvious place on the wall adjoining the flat next door. At the time I wondered whether this was sensible, and decided I'd never play after 10pm. Mostly I played between 8 and 10. I wasn't very good but the act of lobbing darts at a board while listening to the Sound (my new favourite radio station) helped me to relax. On Monday night I found an unaddressed letter in my mailbox. It was what I guessed it might be. Apparently the noise, which they imagined was a ball of some kind, has been tormenting my neighbours ever since it started. They'd lived here since the place was built 16 years ago and had never experienced anything like this. Oh god. One of them works an early shift and I kept him up till 9:45 one night. I felt terrible and apologised sincerely (I hope) in my letter, in which I blamed my non-existent flatmate. Needless to say the dartboard came down. When I bought this place in a large apartment block I did think about possible noise-related issues with neighbours but I never thought I'd be the perpetrator.

On Sunday the guy from the autism group came round. We had a long chat. It's not often I have any sort of chat with someone more introverted than me. He wasn't interested in playing squash or table tennis but was very interested in all things technological. I need the odd bit of human contact every now and then; he said he could happily get by with none.

This weekend I'll be going tramping in the Orongorongo Valley with my cousin's husband (Dave) and their eldest son (he's ten). We'll be camping overnight on Saturday. I'm looking forward to the walking bit (though with a kid I don't expect we'll go that far). The overnight bit I'm not quite as excited about. I'm worried my lack of practical nous will be exposed. Dave is extremely practical.

Something could be happening with my puzzles, and even if it doesn't, I've got some new-found determination to make something happen. This will involve hard work, publicising my business (perhaps using - gasp! - Facebook and Linked In) and for a while doing two jobs. There won't be much time for blogging I'm afraid.